The Republi-CON "Less Goverment, More Freedom" Myth, As Told By the Story of Gefilte Fish

"While combing through the most recent Hillary Clinton e-mail dump, a certain, seemingly non-political, but potentially highly controversial message stands out. . .

The subject line, meanwhile, says only: 'Gefilte fish.' . .

[So] why the leading Democratic presidential candidate sent an e-mail with gefilte fish in the subject line while she was serving as secretary of state. "

Read the Washington Post, The story behind the funniest e-mail Hillary Clinton has ever sent.

It seems that under a so-called 'free-trade' agreement Illinois fish was subject to an import tax on entry to the 'Promised Land, and then-Illinois Rep. Don Manzullo, a Republican, "was fretting over the potential tax."

No doubt as a favor to wealthy constituent.  

The story is a sad commentary on politics and power.

"The F--k Barrel": America's Modern Fuedalism

Learn how "excessive policing and municipal fines can ruin" the poor.

Watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Municipal Violations (HBO):

Understanding the Republi-CON Hatred of Government and Emotional Addiction To Hysteria

In response to the routine Republi-con hatred of government, a great article on the purpose of government, which also explains the right's emotional addiction to hysteria.  Read The New York Times, The Stem and the Flower:

"How much emotional and psychic space should politics take up in a normal healthy brain?. .

On the one hand, there are those who are completely cynical about politics. But, as the columnist Michael Gerson has put it, this sort of cynicism is the luxury of privileged people. If you live in a functioning society, you can say politicians are just a bunch of crooks. But, if you live in a place without rule of law, where a walk down a nighttime street can be terrifying, where tribalism leads to murder, you know that politics is a vital concern. . .

Then there are those who look to politics for identity. They treat their partisan affiliation as a form of ethnicity. These people drive a lot of talk radio and television. . .

Now most TV and radio talk is minute political analysis, while talk of culture has shriveled. This change is driven by people who, absent other attachments, have fallen upon partisanship to give them a sense of righteousness and belonging.

This emotional addiction can lead to auto-hysteria.

So if politics should not be nothing in life, but not everything, what should it be? . .

Imagine you are going to a picnic. Government is properly in charge of maintaining the essential background order: making sure there is a park, that it is reasonably clean and safe, arranging public transportation so as many people as possible can get to it. But if you remember the picnic afterward, these things won’t be what you remember. You’ll remember the creative food, the interesting conversations and the fun activities.

Government is the hard work of creating a background order, but it is not the main substance of life. As Samuel Johnson famously put it, “How small, of all that human hearts endure,/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” Government can set the stage, but it can’t be the play. . .

So one’s attitude toward politics should be a passionate devotion to a mundane and limited thing. Government is essential, but, to switch metaphors ridiculously, it’s the stem of the flower, not the bloom. The best government is boring, gradual and orderly. It’s steady reform, not exciting transformation. It’s keeping the peace and promoting justice and creating a background setting for mobility, but it doesn’t deliver meaning."

For Those Who Favor the Republi-con 'Every Man For Himself' Governing Philosophy

UPDATE: "[T]he wealth of a country is most closely correlated with the degree to which the average person shares in the overall growth of its economy. . .

[I]ncentives matter . . . If national institutions give even their poorest and least educated citizens some shot at improving their own lives — through property rights, a reliable judicial system or access to markets — those citizens will do what it takes to make themselves and their country richer.

Read The New York Times, Why Some Countries Go Bust.

Before the modern era, life was nasty, brutish and short.

But you don't have to read history to see that. There are many countries you can visit today characterized by "social-Darwinist brutishness" where profound poverty exists next to fabulous wealth and the "economic system is geared to reward motivated and resourceful individuals with personal wealth" while others trade garbage.

Where do garbage traders feel lucky and "gain their sense of upward mobility by contrasting their lot with that of their less fortunate neighbors," 'miserable souls' who 'trap rats and frogs and fry them for dinner' or 'eat the scrub grass at the sewage lake’s edge'?

Where does the poverty of "[m]igrants fleeing a crisis-ridden agricultural sector cause an oversupply of cheap labor" such that a "boy whose hand is sliced off by a shredding machine turns, 'with his blood-spurting stump,' to assure his boss that he won’t report the accident"?

Where is this land that has the 'government economic and social policy' of an "insider network of patronage in which the powerful flourish""'to preserve and consolidate' their 'established privilege vis-à-vis those without privilege'"?

And where do 'maggots breed in the infected sores of the garbage scavengers and gangrene inches up fingers, calves swell into tree trunks, while fellow scavengers "'kept a running wager about which of the scavengers would be the next to die'"?

Where is this land of opportunity that "accrues to the already privileged in the age of globalization", this "hollowed-out democracy [of] mean-minded new capitalism", this utopia of laissez-faire free enterprise unburdened by government regulation or health care?

Closer than you think.

Read The New York Times, Fighting for Scraps.

The Good Ol' Days , Dying in Car Crashes

For those who pine for the good ol' days, and those rock solid cars. Wouldn't it be great to see one of the old tanks collided with a new car. The new car would be demolished, right? Well, someone in the insurance industry put that theory to the test. Watch Crash Test Wars: 1959 Chevy Bel Air VS 2009 Chevy Malibu:

The Republi-CON 'Taxes and Regulations Are Killing Business' Myth

UPDATE X: Some much for that Republi-con myth.

"[T]he net percentage of companies that say they have already increased their employment in the last three months — that is, the percent saying they increased their staff minus the percent saying they decreased it — was positive for the first time in nearly four years."

Read The New York Times, Small Businesses Plan to Increase Hiring.


UPDATE IX: You "may not like President Obama’s regulations, but they are not stealing jobs or crushing our economy." Read The New York Times, The Wonky Liberal.


UPDATE VIII: "For the last nine years, the World Bank has been grading countries on 10 measures of business regulation: getting electricity, enforcing contracts, protecting investors, dealing with construction permits, trading across borders, registering property, resolving insolvency, paying taxes, getting credit and starting a business.

Based on these criteria . . . The United States comes in fourth."

Read The New York Times, Is Overregulation Driving U.S. Companies Offshore?


UPDATE VII: Another brilliant take-down by Colbert, this time the Republi-con myth regarding "the EPA's job-murdering environmental regulations." Watch the Colbert Report, Indecision 2012 - Job-Killing EPA:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

But if you think life is so much better in other countries, Colbert notes that in China, "thanks to mercury poisoning and factory suicides, positions are opening up all the time."


UPDATE VI: "If people are willing to do a job, no matter how dangerous, pointless or dehumanizing, the government has no business stopping them." Watch The Colbert Report, Look out for the Little Guy, which notes the efforts by Florida Republi-con Ritch Workman to repeal 'job-killing' laws against dwarf tossing:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Why not allow baby-juggling also?

What a fine society we will have when Republi-cons next rule.


UPDATE V: "[R]egulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment." Read The New York Times, Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs, which references several surveys and includes this table:




UPDATE IV: "[C]oncerns over sales, rather than concerns over regulations or taxes, are what have really changed in recent years" Read the Washington Post, Regulations aren’t to blame for the 'uncovery', which references Economic Policy Institute, Regulatory uncertainty: A phony explanation for our jobs problem.


UPDATE III: "Despite what Republican presidential candidates are saying, regulation and taxes are not responsible for America’s weak job growth." Read The New York Times, Phony Fear Factor.


UPDATE II: For more on taxes, regulations and the Republi-con "confidence fairy's effect on the American economy," watch The Colbert Report, Barack Obama's American Jobs Act - Paul Krugman:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

UPDATE: Imagine a world without government regulation, where businesses invite more foreign 'guest workers' to take American jobs for piece-rate wages.

No need to imagine, businesses are allowed to do so now.

Read The New York Times, La. Business Owners Sue Over New Rules for Guest Workers.

"Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.

'Government regulations are not 'choking' our business, the hospitality business,' Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. 'In order to do business in today's environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order.'"

Read McClatchy Newspapers, Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say.

As discussed in the past, Republi-CON zombie ideas live on.

So many lies, so little time to refudiate.

Better, Not Just Less, Government

UPDATE V: "Want to learn about the plight of unemployed workers during the Great Depression? Head to Amazon.com and order John Steinbeck’s Depression-era epic, “The Grapes of Wrath.” Want to learn about the plight of workers during our own Lesser Depression? Head over to Amazon’s warehouse in Lehigh, Pa., and watch them prepare your book for shipping." Read the Washington Post, Amazon.com and the Grapes of Wrath.


UPDATE IV: The future of labor without OSHA -- "working in a convection oven while blow-drying your hair." Read The New York Times, Inside Amazon’s Very Hot Warehouse.


UPDATE III: Still pining for laissez-faire land, move to China, where, "[o]ver the past two and a half years, thousands of workers, villagers and children have been found to be suffering from toxic levels of lead exposure". Read The New York Times, Lead Poisoning in China: The Hidden Scourge.


UPDATE II: Still seeking "a country with low taxes, little regulation and traditional family values, I have the perfect place for them. Body armor suggested." Read The New York Times, Our Fantasy Nation?


UPDATE: For those who doubt the benefit of good government regulation, compare the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan and the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean (2004) and Japan, "Perhaps no country in the world [was] better prepared to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis than Japan." Read The New York Times, Japan’s Strict Building Codes Saved Lives.

Now that the Republi-con ideology has proven false, what next? How about better government? Read The New York Times, Better, Not Just More, Regulation, which argues that the country needs a new regulatory structure that will make the markets function better, not worse.

The Price of Civilized Society

"The Wall Street Journal editorial page routinely refers to those who pay no taxes as “lucky duckies,” as if zero taxation is the ideal state of nature.

Oddly, one never hears Republicans praise those countries where people are lucky duckies — those where taxation is a small fraction of what it is here."

Like Equatorial Guinea, Myanmar, Libya, Chad, and Republic of Congo

Read The New York Times, I’d Rather Be an Unlucky Ducky.

The goal should be better, not just less, government.

Great Quote On So-Called Government Wisdom

For all you partisan and/or conspiracy groupies out there, "probably the most famous Swedish quotation in the English-speaking world":

"Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?"

'Karl Marx Was Right'

"There's an old axiom that goes, "wise is the person who appreciates candor almost as much as good news." With that as a guide, place the forthcoming decidedly in the category of candor.

Economist Nouriel 'Dr. Doom' Roubini, the New York University professor who four years ago accurately predicted the global financial crisis, said one of economist Karl Marx's critiques of capitalism is playing itself out in the current global financial crisis.

Marx, among other theories, argued that capitalism had an internal contradiction that would cyclically lead to crises, and that, at minimum, would place pressure on the economic system.

Companies, Roubini said, are motivated to minimize costs, to save and stockpile cash, but this leads to less money in the hands of employees, which means they have less money to spend and flow back to companies.

Now, in the current financial crisis, consumers, in addition to having less money to spend due to the above, are also motivated to minimize costs, to save and stockpile cash, magnifying the effect of less money flowing back to companies.

'Karl Marx had it right,' Roubini said in an interview with wsj.com. 'At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational ... is a self-destructive process.'

Roubini added absent organic, strong GDP growth -- which can increase wages and consumer spending -- what's needed is large fiscal stimulus, agreeing with another high-profile economist, Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, that, in the case of the United States, the $786 billion fiscal stimulus approved by Congress in 2009 was too small to create the aggregate demand necessary to advance the U.S. economic recovery to a self-sustaining expansion.

Absent additional fiscal stimuli, or unexpected strong GDP growth, the only solution is a universal debt restructuring for banks, homes (essentially households/families) and governments, Roubini said. However, no such universal restructuring has occurred, he added.

Without that additional fiscal stimulus, that lack of restructuring has led to 'zombie houses, zombie banks and zombie governments,' he said."

Read the International Business Times, Nouriel 'Dr. Doom' Roubini: 'Karl Marx Was Right'.

But as discussed in the past, Republi-CON zombie ideas live on.

P.S. He also predicts that the global economic crisis will cause more social unrest and "absent a return to the right balance between markets and public goods, conditions are likely to get substantially worse. . .

The Tea Party, and other conservatives are, by-and-large, in addition to their opposition to more, short-term fiscal stimulus, also opposed to vital investments in human capital, skills, and the social safety net to increase productivity that enable workers to compete, be flexible, and thrive in a global economy."

Read the International Business Times, NYU's Nouriel 'Dr. Doom' Roubini-Social Unrest Will Spread.

Government Profiteering

Washington D.C. residents "now enjoy the highest median household income of any metropolitan area in the country, and five of the top 10 jurisdictions in America — Loudoun, Howard and Fairfax counties, and Falls Church and Fairfax City." Read the Washington Post, Government dollars fuel wealth: D.C. enclaves reap rewards of contracting boom.

Time to reform Washington.

SOTU

Politics today, this pretty much says it all:



Needs no additional comments.

Needless Rules?

Needless rules, "reviled by some are cherished by others." Would it have prevented a
Gulf Shores mother from running over 4-year-old daughter at an Okaloosa RV park?
Read The New York Times, Obama Is Latest to Hunt for Elusive 'Dumb' Rules.

Prosecutorial Payback, Shrouded in Secrets

Halloween is over, but this is scary:

After a failed effort to stop a woman from talking about a case, an activist was served with a 'sprawling' federal subpoena.

"It had almost 100 subparts and sought documents, e-mails, phone records, checks, bank records, credit card receipts, photographs, videos and 'Facebook communications (including messages and wall posts)' concerning contacts with dozens of people, including doctors and lawyers, along with information about a billboard supporting the [a doctor and his wife being prosecuted] and a documentary film called, perhaps presciently, 'The Chilling Effect.'"

When the woman refused to comply with the court’s order, a federal judge imposed fines of $200 each a day."

Read The New York Times, A First Amendment Case, Shrouded in Secrets.

Government secrecy is antithetical to democracy. See OpenTheGovernment.org.

Arrogant Government Official

What would you do if you were responsible for a government agency that had falsely claimed that a person had donated blood knowing he was HIV positive when actually the offense was a totally different crime. Apologize and correct the record? That's not one one arrogant local government agency did.

For years the person “diligently pursued efforts to correct the erroneous information. In November of 2007, [he] submitted to a blood test to prove his negative HIV status. He sent a letter from his doctor to the office of the clerk of court, but the entry remained unchanged. Plaintiff contacted the clerk’s office by phone but was told that nothing could be done about the public record. In August of 2009, he again mailed a copy of his doctor’s note and a copy of the erroneous internet posting to Mary M. Johnson, and . . . calls to [her] office in September of 2009 resulted in . . . being subjected to 'rude comments.' In October of 2009 he sent a certified letter to Mary M. Johnson with a detailed statement concerning a defamation lawsuit. The package was returned to [him] along with a notation that he did not pay the filing fee. He tried to get information about the filing fee over the phone, but a young woman that he spoke to refused to give him the information. He then sent another certified letter to Ms. Johnson indicating his intent to file suit in federal court." (Citations omitted.)

No apology, just arrogant rude treatment. Now thousands of your tax dollars are being spend to defend the inexcusable. Read the court file.

Mary Johnson should apologize for the actions of her office, investigate and discipline the appropriate employees, and pay the person to settle the case, instead of some out of town lawyer to defend the case.

And if she won't, she should do the public a favor and resign, before the next election.

As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap

UPDATE VIII: Spill, baby, spill!

"Right now, royalty rates for offshore leases end up promoting dangerous deep-water drilling — the deeper you drill, the less you have to pay the government in royalties. Under the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act of 1995, Congress even waived royalties on millions of barrels of oil for certain deepwater leases from 1996 to 2000. This and other royalty relief programs have deprived the Treasury of billions of dollars in revenue, while rewarding the riskiest drilling in the deepest waters. " Read The New York Times, The Good Driller Award.


UPDATE VII: Quit whining. "The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless. " Read The New York Times, Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old.

The article includes pictures of the ecological damage.

SUV driving Americans never cared about oil spills before. Where did they think the gas came from?


UPDATE VI: RICO's to blame for "an ecological Armageddon that could literally destroy the marine and coastal environment and way of life for generation of Americans." Read the Pensacola News Journal, RICO suit: BP manipulated Bush team.

To read the court documents, click here.

Sounds like the complaint is largely about the political process -- the American public voted for deregulation and they got what they voted for:

The biggest oil spill ever. The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The deadliest mine disaster in 25 years. One recall after another of toys from China, of vehicles from Toyota, of hamburgers from roach-infested processing plants. The whole Vioxx fiasco. And let's not forget the biggest climate threat since the Ice Age.

And with deregulation, there is no longer a need to export our industrial catastrophes, such as Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster.

Yet the faux populists of the Tea Party train their anger on the government while giving corporations a pass. And Obama, accused of being a socialist, has actually been a no-fault capitalist, cleaning up corporate messes without winning much in the way of new laws to prevent a recurrence.

Too many corporations have survived their misdeeds with no more than an angry hearing or two: GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Bank of America, Massey Energy. The legislative dressing-down obviously isn't sufficient deterrent. Neither is firing the CEO, because he's invariably replaced by another just like him.

Thus, the court should dismiss the complaint and remind the public, we've got the best government business interest can buy.


UPDATE V: What is the true cost of gas? Read the Washington Post, Think gas is too pricey? Think again.

Also "[a] quenchless thirst for whale oil, then petroleum, pushed man ever farther and deeper. And with great hubris, great risk." Read The New York Times, The Ahab Parallax: ‘Moby Dick’ and the Spill.


UPDATE IV: "While the gulf tragedy is the big oil story of the moment, Ecuador is still hurting from destructive drilling going back decades.” Read The New York Times, Disaster in the Amazon.

And did you know, "[t]he oil deposit now leaking slowly into the sea would have provided about five days' worth of oil to Americans." Read The New York Times, For Five Days of Oil.

Was it worth it?


UPDATE III: ""Deregulation" is wonderful until we discover what happens when regulations aren't issued or enforced. Everyone is a capitalist until a private company blunders. Then everyone starts talking like a socialist, presuming that the government can put things right because they see it as being just as big and powerful as its Tea Party critics claim it is. " Read the Washington Post, Gulf oil spill offers a lesson in capitalism vs. socialism.

Note: regulation is not socialism.

How ya likin that laissez-faire capalism now! Not everybody does. Read the Washington Post, Time for industry to end its war on regulation.


UPDATE II: "An environmental 9/11 is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Will President Obama have the courage to ask the country to get behind a new strategy on energy?" Read The New York Times, Obama and the Oil Spill.

Or will we continue to reap 'the benefits' of our oil addiction, including environmental catastrophes and terrorism.


UPDATE: There is an old proverb, author unknown: "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." Read the Washington Post, Oil well's blowout preventer had leaks, dead battery, design flaws.

Don't ya just love that Republi-con -- less government, less regulation, and more freedom -- ideology now. The banksters, mining companies, and oil companies sure do!

"[T]he Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry — although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees’ minds." Read The New York Times, Sex & Drugs & the Spill.

After decades of antigovernment ideology, what did you expect?

What could possibly go wrong?

Just trust them. Read Salon, This Modern World:



Does this remind you of any recent event?

Why America is Bankrupt, Exhibit 1

Believe it or not -- the government has to pay government employees to return government property. Outrageous, but true. Read the Washington Post, Bureau of Engraving and Printing cans printer program.

Remember, it is your tax dollars at work.

I'll vote for any candidate who will deliver real government reform now.

Government Reform

Article highlighting the need for government reform, and further proof that government workers are overcompensated:

• New York Times article
  
  A Disability Epidemic Among a Railroad’s Retirees
  Almost every career employee of the Long Island Rail Road applies for and gets disability payments after retirement.